Report shows 6,800 more homes in downtown Cleveland by 2030

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Developers could build – and expect to fill – 6,800 more residences in downtown Cleveland by 2030 without oversaturating the market, a new study asserts.

Research by Urban Partners, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm, lays to rest concerns about a potential overabundance of housing in and near the central business district. There’s ample demand, the consultants say. But Cleveland must find ways to add more for-sale homes to the rental-heavy market and to turn more downtown workers into residents.

The study, funded by civic and nonprofit groups and released Wednesday, evaluates the opportunities for housing in downtown Cleveland and portions of six nearby neighborhoods. By plumbing census data, evaluating growth trends and comparing Cleveland to more-developed cities, Urban Partners concluded that downtown could approach – or possibly surpass – 30,000 residents by 2030, up from an estimated 17,500 renters, owners and students today.

“We were latecomers to the national generational shift toward downtown living,” said Michael Deemer, executive vice president of business development at the nonprofit Downtown Cleveland Alliance, which represents property owners. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but one of the things this report is telling us is that there’s still a lot more that we can do.”

The alliance commissioned the report after more than a year of talks about demand, affordability and housing diversity in the core city and adjacent neighborhoods. Cleveland Neighborhood Progress; Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that champions affordable housing; the Greater Cleveland Partnership; and its finance affiliate Cleveland Development Advisors also contributed to the $50,000 effort.

The consultants defined downtown as four census tracts between the Inner Belt and Lake Erie, including portions of the west bank of the Flats and all of Burke Lakefront Airport. That area spans more than 6,500 households whose residents are 57 percent millennials, the generation born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s. Nearly a quarter of downtown residents were born between the mid-1960s and early ’80s; 12 percent are older.

The key findings:

* Only 1.8 percent of downtown workers actually live downtown, according to the most recent census data. That’s up notably from the early 2000s, but still modest. Consultants found an average of 4.4 percent of downtown workers living downtown across nine other major cities with more robust central housing markets.

“You’re just sitting in a position where you have a lot of capacity to grow compared to other downtowns, period,” said James Hartling, a partner with Urban Partners.